"People with the emotional maturity of an apple."

Oh dear...how I have known people like that...not the best to keep company with.
Still just...that came out of much distress...but I find the analogy very well put...and funny.

One breath, just one breath at a time...

I really, really, really miss my grandmother.
A lot.
I went to check my mail in Samford and for some reason the empty box reminded me that...I wouldn't be getting any cards from her. It's been six or seven years since I have gotten one from her...but just...the void is still there.

It is nowhere as raw as the feelings were when her health started to decline...but at the same time...it's one of those things that I don't think can really ever heal. I think Anne Lamott put it best when she mentioned that loosing someone you love...it's like having a badly broken leg...it'll heal and you can dance but you will always still have a small limp and hurt some when you move the wrong way.

I sometimes hate the fact I am forced to need people...and resent God for putting me in life where I am going to hurt like Hell and there is nothing I can do about it. There is just want to be self righteous about it...but it's a loosing battle...just breathing, being able to move at all and breath is a blessing.

It is amazing how the things we talked about in Acting I today applied to my life...how pain and the past have marked my life so heavily...and how impossible I have found it to just be able to move at times...to think, to breath...to do anything except feel the pain in such a frighteningly vivid manner.

But...even in the cold snow that falls from this pain...the frigid casing that wraps around my heart and tries to keep me from breathing...even in the dark...I feel hope, I feel the warmth of the Lamb as he calls my name and relentlessly pursues me...with such a reckless love.

Psalm 127

"Unless the Lord builds a house,
the work of the builders is wasted.
Unless the Lord protects a city,
guarding it with sentries will do no good.
It is useless for you to work so hard
from early morning until late at night,
anxiously working for food to eat;
for God gives rest to his loved ones."
-Psalm 127:1-2

"I've conquered my past
The future is here at last
I stand at the entrance
To a new world I can see
The ruins to the right of me
Will soon have lost sight of me
Love rescue me"

I'm hurting.
Fairly freaking bad.
There was not hot water so I had a cold shower.
I feel nauseated.

But I have joy.
I hurt like I was thrown down a flight of stairs but God has me standing up.
I'm drinking blueberry pomegranate tea with a smile.

The future is here at last and I'm greeting her with a smile and a limp, but a smile all the same.

"


"One"

Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same
Will it make it easier on you
Now you got someone to blame
You say one love, one life
When it's one need in the night
It's one love
We get to share it
It leaves you baby
If you don't care for it

Did I disappoint you
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without
Well it's too late tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We're one but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other
One

Have you come here for forgiveness
Have you come to raise the dead
Have you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head
Did I ask too much
More than a lot
You gave me nothing
Now it's all I got
We're one but we're not the same
We hurt each other, then we do it again

You say love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter but then you make me crawl
And I can't be holding on to what you got
When all you got is hurt
One love, one blood, one life
You got to do what you should
One life with each other
Sisters, brothers
One life but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other
One"

Hrmmm

Nightmares...again...bah.

So strange, so weird...so true and so strange.
All at once.
Reality is so much more real than I could ever give it credit for.

"That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try"

>_< ZOMG pain!!!

Moogle.

That is all.

Mostly.

I wish I could give you the positive change you want to see so bad...but the best I can do right now is just take a step...left, right, left right...hoping I am heading in the right way.

Things are always changing...there is beauty to behold...and we're all heading in some direction, there is confusion...I'm so tired.

Maybe I am getting better...at least that would explain why I am sleeping so much lately...just the pain is still worrisome.

Maybe the doctors can fix my body...maybe even bits of my mind too...it's just between the Great Physician and myself to do some needed work on spirit improvement...walking forward and not holding back...being terrified of change and of the past.

Things are so vivid...so ever changing.
I want, need, hope...so desperately...
Everything human...

Words fail me.
As of late they often have...

Peace tomorrow, maybe the sun will rise on churches and inspire new hope.
The energy drain of the humidity and heat may be going...coolness is a welcome change.

Fall is my season, the season of change, where things become brown and colored and colder and darker.

October, November, December...such hope for you all this year...

Hope.
Hope?
Hope.

"How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here. "

Quote of the Day:

"God is not proud...He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him."
-C.S. Lewis

Psalm 124

"What if the Lord had not been on our side?
Let all Israel repeat:
What if the Lord had not been on our side
when people attacked us?
They would have swallowed us alive
in their burning anger.
The waters would have engulfed us;
a torrent would have overwhelmed us.
Yes, the raging waters of their fury
would have overwhelmed our very lives.

Praise the Lord,
who did not let their teeth tear us apart!
We escaped like a bird from a hunter’s trap.
The trap is broken, and we are free!
Our help is from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth."
-Psalm 124:1-8


It is nice to breath.
To have a cup of tea.
I am alive.
Here for the moment and soon to be gone.
Beauty that lasts from moment to moment,
hope that will live on beyond the fragile.

This personality, this soul
the need to feel and breath
leap and bound
from moment to moment
will stretch from now until forever
eternally laid out before Love
in such unknowable
vivid tones and colors.

Here now,
gone and soon.
But beauty while it lasts
as it evolves
and becomes more than it would have been
in any other form or sense.


Thank you for loving me in spite of my insanity and faulty ways...of carrying me when I'm too tired to do anything except be in pain...thank you for loving me as me...loving me enough to never leave me just as I am...but wanting me to improve, to grow and transform into who I can be.

So much I know so little I do know
but I do know love
feel it so vividly
even when I hurt
and in the ache
and longing for you.

Eternal longings,
just to blend from now
into you
soul and soul entwined
and forever together
never to be gone again.

Hope beyond hope.
Such beauty
such need.

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Sometimes...I just...

Hopeful confusion?
Is that a legitimate state of mind?

...you know it is going to be a long day when the books you are reading have an introduction to the introduction in order to explain the reason why/for/how of the existence of an introduction to begin with in the first place.

Oie zay.

My soul feels a tad dingy...a bit dirty and needs to be cleaned off.
It's been sitting outside in the dirt for a little too long and needs to be shaken off before being allowed to come inside and play.

I guess part of the problem is my ability to see most black and white issues in various shades of gray and to know that no one is really the villain...as much as we all are just broken and confused people wandering around this triage unit called life.

That isn't to shirk responsibilities as much as it is just to say we are all equally dependent on some measure of grace to be able to breath and reach some sort of place where we can stop and have some juice to drink.

I guess that might be an appropriate metaphor for life.
We all are really just broken and wounded people walking around a sick bay with an opportunity to help those with the same injuries and pain we have experienced and dealt with...hmm...sometimes life is too real and too vivid for life.

That...

Yeah.

That will be a problem.

I kind of...feel nauseous and want to throw up now...bah...

Tea, tea, tea...

I have issues with facades...somethings seeming too good to be true...I'm not sure...may just be paranoia...and yet...I detect hints of...

Hrmm...

No need to judge on my part, just pray.
What more can you do to help someone who doesn't want help?
Or may not even need it.

That is the funny thing about being human...you never get the full picture of anything.

"Many strangers have I met
On the road to my regret
Many lost who seek to find themselves in me
They ask me to reveal
The very thoughts they would conceal
Love rescue me

And the sun in the sky makes a shadow of you and I
Stretching out as the sun sinks in the sea
I'm here without a name in the palace of my shame
Love rescue me

In the cold mirror of a glass
I see my reflection pass
I see the dark shades of what I used to be
I see the purple of her eyes
The scarlet of my lies
Love rescue me

And the sun in the sky makes a shadow of you and I
Stretching out as the sun sinks in the sea
I'm hanging on by my thumbs
I'm ready for whatever comes
Love rescue me

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow
Yet I will fear no evil
I have cursed they rod and staff
They no longer comfort me
Love rescue me

I've conquered my past
The future is here at last
I stand at the entrance
To a new world I can see
The ruins to the right of me
Will soon have lost sight of me
Love rescue me"

Psalm 123

"I lift my eyes to you,
O God, enthroned in heaven.
We keep looking to the Lord our God for his mercy,
just as servants keep their eyes on their master,
as a slave girl watches her mistress for the slightest signal.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy,
for we have had our fill of contempt.
We have had more than our fill of the scoffing of the proud
and the contempt of the arrogant."
-Psalm 123:1-4

Mercy...such beauty, such wonder after a lifetime of trying to find perfection that can never be. I am so sick of trying to find something that isn't there...trying to beat myself to find a life that isn't there...and the bitterness and anger that comes from being disappointed with everything and nothing.

Can I let go?
I can I just let everything go?
Fall, fall into your arms and forget every pain and sin I have ever felt?

It is a new day, a new life, a new everything...and I just want to go back to sleep. Can that be my worship for now? Just enjoying another hour or two of sleep because I feel like crap?

I love you Daddy, I love you so much.
You are amazing and so beautiful to me.
I never know what will happens but even when horrible, horrible stuff happens you love me...and I can never thank you enough, worship or praise you enough.
Thank you.

Thank you for loving me as I am, not what I should be.

Random Explosion of Thoughts and Exuberant Gratefulness

Life can never be as simple as a story or song...sadly in ways...
However there is something infinitely more wonderful about how messy, screwed up and disgusting as humans finding redemption and being able to make even the simplest things work.

Friendship.
Playing games.
Talking about books over coffee.

I never have stopped to appreciate just how amazing it is to be able to work on homework together and laugh over small things.

Yes I am excessively negative because I look at the wrong things a lot of the time...I see the imperfections and what things COULD be...which is maddening...and will never lead to happiness...however friendships where people are allowed to not have everything together...that is something I would like to see.

In fact...the Society of Scapegoats should have something like that in it's manifesto. Perfection is not allowed in our meetings, activities or friendships...perfect people are banned and will be set on fire if they persist in coming.

There is nothing perfect in human existence...and the fact God not only desires us, but thinks of us, longs for us to be near in spite of that shows what an utter madman he is. He doesn't desire even the wicked to perish...even the worst of us...and how Jesus had true humanity...it is amazing, beyond amazing...just this visceral love...this painful love that makes my heart ache...and desire to just hug Jesus and cry out every last ounce of anguish joy inside of me.

I think I love U2's music so much because the songs capture emotion or a moment so well...this element of worship that transcends and makes my Christian mystic/hermit tendencies all happy, warm and fuzzy inside...

I don't even know what I am rambling about...except I am happy to be alive this very moment. I could have died any infinite number of times...and I love my mother, my friends, my dear sweet friends so very much...they are this collection of rag tag individuals all misfits from the church but all amazing in their own ways.

Who says we must be perfect?
Who demands it?
Humans demand it when God knows we can't do it?
How silly and futile.

Jesus thank you being so utterly wacky and insane to have made me and love me as I am. Do you know and realize how utterly screwed up that is? How insane and crazy I am? Do you?

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Note to self: Stop trying to understand stuff while having a migraine.

Thank you.

Good things, bad things, good things, bad things...life is a mixture and is never just one thing.

Confusion, growing migraine starting...hope.
Not hope in the immediate sense of things per say...although things are better...but hope that even though life never has resolutions...everything will resolve sooner rather than later...maybe not in this breath but possibly in the next.

Quote of the Day:

"I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything...the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns."
— Anne Lamott

"If anyone says ever being a Christian is easy, they are smoking crack."

BEST THING I have read all day.
Made me laugh until I hurt myself.
^_^

A good day...I just wish I wasn't in so much pain that I wanted to scream...

Oh how quickly doth our dreams become living nightmares...

So many thoughts...so little space for them...such curious things...manner of living, life...everything...

I feel as if I am setting myself up for more pain, more problems...but...

The door is here.
The decision must be made now.

Curiouser and curiouser...because...

What makes me happy?
Such a silly thought...

Daylight Fading into the Next

Today...was such a difficult but wonderful day.
Easily the best day I have had since summer break started and ended.

Just...I feel connected again...and even though I feel like death thawed out...I laughed, I smiled...I felt safe again...not judged. Even though I made such a mess out of things...and acted immature...it's beautiful to know that there is such thing as being able to try and move on...and learn.

Other things...I'm not so looking forward to...but I am just going to be me.
What else can I do?
I don't like everything about me...I don't like being sick or having depressed moments...but I refuse to pretend to be something I am not...at least that is what I gather from Jesus...it's okay to be crazy, we're all broken and sometimes it's okay to just hug and drink juice.


What else can I do? Who else can I be?
I still don't understand so much...
But my mom was amazing today and helped me so much.
I rarely mention good things and am grateful on here...but she helped me.
She has been such a strong supporter even though I tend to forget to be more grateful and thankful for that love...I am, even when I am so caught up in myself I forget about people.


I've never gotten over my grandmother passing away...and so it can be hard for me to be open with people...because even though we live in the moment...I see them going...leaving...dying...and it's hard. I don't want to endure such loss...but what other choice do I have?

I don't want to be strong...I don't want to be the one acting as a pillar.
I just want to lay in your arms Daddy...just rest knowing you are so much bigger than everything else...my love, my God, my savior, my Daddy...so much, so powerful...so beautiful and amazing...thank you. For family, for friends, for joy, for pain, for the awkward moments and the best...

I want this to be the best year it can be.
One step.
Just one step at a time...

I laugh.
What else may I do in the face of such madness at this?
All of this foreknown and foresaw.
I laugh, laugh and laugh.
Oh such bitter madness.

Video Games Mimicking Life

I just finished the main campaign in Fallout 3. It took my a couple of years because of how lazy I am with playing games but I finally reached the end.

I always treat RPG's like I myself were the character and so all the major decision I make revolve around helping people, saving kittens in trees, defusing nuclear warheads instead of detonating them for profit and the like.

So I am all for biting the metaphorical bullet and shouldering the responsibility of all of humanity in game like I try to do in real life...but then tonight I just sort of had a "wtf?!?" moment at the end of the game. The main character is asked to sacrifice his life to restore hope and clean water to the wastelands and...I just sat there and said to the computer monitor, "Really? Really! I have to save everyone because they are too lazy or selfish to actually get off their collective butts and do something for once?"

It is quite possible that I am merely projecting all of my current frustrations, fear and confusion onto the poor game...but I just realized how I keep putting myself into this 'savior' role I was never meant to fill.

Sometimes I wish someone would just walk up to me and say "It's okay Matthew, sit this one out." and then they will take me by the hand and shoulder and lead me to a place to sit down because I normally will not stop until I have almost self destructed from trying to do everything by myself.

I don't know why I do this to myself...or why I feel guilty for just sitting in a room very quietly and trying to relax but I do. I don't respond very well to over stimulation and that is all that is going on.

I seriously just need to be able to relax...but I can't.
I feel obligated to do everything.
Fix everyone.
If I am not busy I am worried and if I am not worried I am worried about not being worried...and so on and so forth.

But I am eating a blueberry poptart.
I don't want to deal with life.
Or feeling like I am not wanted or needed.
Or the nagging feeling I am just a temporary fix.

Poptarts are nice.

If nothing else I can choose to smile.
And mean that.
And pray.
Still praying.
Praying without ceasing.
Even though my tongue and throat are hurting for some reason.

I just...

There is no point to writing it...it's the same thing...the same broken and crying prayer from the past several years.

Please heal, make me whole, make me able to function and just be able to get on with life. I don't care about occupations, schools, marriage or having a family...I just want to be able to function in day to day life.

I used up all of the pain medication thinking I was going to actually be fixed...God...I feel so naive and stupid to think that. I just...don't know what to do.

I can't keep living like this...

Oh well.
People prefer a comedy to a tragedy.
Who doesn't enjoy being lied to about bad news?

I hate to be incessantly negative...but if I can't function because of being sick, what is the point?

Is the point to try anyway, just to see what happens and hope for the absolute best?

Pink Floyd's album "Wish You Were Here" has become the unofficial soundtrack to this period of my life...I sort of understand now why my dad liked them so much. There is this subtle nature to their music which grows on you...a bit why I like the more experimental parts of U2's catalog.

There, I wrote something, a statement which was not complaining or about me being sick.

The next step is to transition that idea to something a bit more everyday...such as weather, cats or maybe candy.

Wow...that is utterly random.

I wonder...

Change...directions...breathing, confusion...different ideas...different ideals...


Hmm...pain.

Choices, choices, choices...


Truth...or lies?

Is there ever lying for a good reason?
Words...subjectivity...

Might would be best to just avoid that sort altogether.
Otherwise...well...yeah.

Nerves, expressions, dissimulated...it's not real persay.
Electronic impulses are what you make of them...I think.

"How I wish, how I wish you were here."

Why was I stupid enough to actually think that mattered?

I feel like a quote out of context
Withholding the rest
So I can be free what you want to see
I got the gesture and sound
Got the timing down
It's uncanny, yeah, you think it was me
Do you think I should take a class
To lose my southern accent
Did I make me up, or make the face till it stuck
I do the best imitation of myself

Quote of the Day:

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”
-Anne Lamott

Psalm 120

"How I suffer in far-off Meshech.
It pains me to live in distant Kedar.
I am tired of living
among people who hate peace.
I search for peace;
but when I speak of peace, they want war!"
-Psalm 120:5-7



I feel like I am in exile from myself.
I keep running, running to hold the place I am at...and then I realize I have no clue as to what I was doing or where I was going in the first place.

I can go on about how unfair this is...but you already know.
You never delight in our sufferings...Jesus is mentioned as being a man of many sorrows...and living amongst us...it just brings comfort that you are a God that knows and cares about where we are, what we are doing and what will happen.

This isn't just some abstract philosophical concept...you love me, you desire me and even when I run away and hide so I can cry...you follow me and have your arms wide open to embrace me and love me...how can my paltry thanks ever be enough?

I am a hypocrite and cause pain...but I want to change, I want to bring peace where I go, peace at any cost except for striking back...true lasting peace, not one instilled by fear or coercion...but the peace built out of your love for me and the love you have put inside this broken heart.

The love you put in this heart doesn't stay because of all the cracks and fractures...the love you pour into me seeps, leaks and at times gushes out from me...and I want it to be love, not bitterness, resentment or poison...there is too much evil already.

I want to be broken open like a vessel of perfume so that when I am finally destroyed it brings peace...not more grief or pain.
Please.
Please change me.
Guide me.
Love me.
I love you Daddy.

Salt in the wound.
Lemon juice on a cut.
Nails on a chalkboard.
Insult to injury.

Geez, would someone go ahead and just douse me in petrol and set me on fire already so I can be done with this?

I should be doing homework.
Or writing.
Maybe playing a video game.
Instead I am sitting here, in front of my computer drinking Gatorade and listening to "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd, all the while feeling so freaked out about tomorrow.

I wish there were some easy answers...why did all of this have to fall at once?
I guess it's better now than much later...but still.

Is it so wrong to want to be liked and wanted and not to repulse people with my faith?

Ah...just randomness I guess.

I can't share these deep thoughts with anyone...I just have to fold my arms over my chest so they won't try to escape and cause more harm.
I don't know if I can ever trust so deeply like that again...it just is so hard to gather up the strength and faith to fly when it feels like your wings got crumpled up and are just a broken mess barely hanging on.

I have to be strong.
Or least wear a mask.
Maybe if I can pretend well enough the problems may go away...or at least I would have better conversational topics with people besides freaking out and thinking I am dying.

I mean...if this surgery happens...I will not be able to function for a while.
Major invasive surgery...and I will be stuck here...no school...not really seeing anyone at all. Who in their right mind would want to drive up here from Mobile just to see me drugged up and in pain?

I don't feel depressed, suicidal or anxiety.
I just feel...so useless and powerless, which in and of itself is scary enough.
I do not think it matters much because these problems are out of my hands.

I know you keep trying to get my attention Daddy, try to beat sense into me...that I need to sit still, be quite, let you love on me and transform me...but I am so scared of the pain...of what it will take for me to become more like you...and what else I will have to loose and endure loosing.

I want to be able to praise always in the light and dark...sickness and pain...good health and love.
I want so badly to be faithful...to endure to follow you where you guide.
I just am so blind and uncertain...help...please?

Overcast

Words, words, words
that is all they ever are.
Words, words, words
that is all they can be.

All is dark and shade
until a brilliant star
pierces the veil
breaking just when is apt
and opportune.

Falling like rain
full of grace
bringing life
and hope to this desert plain.

Endlessly falling
with little shape
of rhyme or reason
but words they are
and words they shall remain.

Quote of the Day:

"Teach me, O God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith."
-Soren Kierkegaard

"we are the few that won't say nothing right
we are the footsteps fading into the night
nobody cares and nobody stares with such conviction and i say:
i never wanted this, no one ever wanted this
but they gave it to you so you might as well be proud of it
and i don't know where we went wrong
all i know now is i got to do something right"